It did not take long for the source of the roaring to become visible as it was moving out into the open around the crater. That first glance made me blink in confusion for a moment, uncertain of what I should call the roaring creature. It had three heads, all somewhat different in colour, making me think of a hydra, but its lower body was that of a serpent, not the more reptilian, or draconic, body I remembered the famed monsters of Greek myth having. Not that the name really mattered, its abilities did. I was far more concerned whether it had the regeneration of a hydra or if we had to be prepared for something else. What’s more, each of its heads had a distinct colour, one was covered in orange-red scales, another in acidic green scales and the last had a purple shade that made me think of certain highly poisonous frogs. These distinct colours continued down the creature’s body, turning into stripes of colour that wrapped around the serpentine length, giving it a quite interesting appearance and making me wonder whether that sort of skin would make for good armour. The pattern was certainly unique.

But before we could skin the beast, we had to slay it. Luckily, it wasn’t approaching from right behind us but it came from the side, almost a quarter of the way around the crater, giving us about twice the time we would have had if it had masked its approach. Not that the creature was terribly sneaky thanks to its size or maybe it simply didn’t care for stealth. Whatever the case, its open and direct approach gave me a lot of space to harass it.

My opening gambit was straightforward and simple, using Icicles as it gave me a good baseline to test the monster’s defences when it came to the Cold. Taking a moment, I drew up a runic formation before channelling a constant flow of Astral Power into it, causing a hail of Icicles to fly forward, none of them terribly large but nicely hard and sharp either way, all of them raining down on the creature attacking us.

Sadly, the only thing the attack really accomplished was to show us that the thing had the regeneration befitting its three serpentine heads that marked it as a hydra. My Icicles ripped multiple bloody gashes into its large body, partially thanks to the strange influence of the locally radiating Astral Power, but these wounds closed at a speed visible to the naked eye. Not quite in moments but I estimated that a wound the length of my arm and multiple fingers deep, originally oozing copious amounts of blood would close in about two minutes, making a drawn-out fight a losing proposition.

Nodding to myself, I channelled another singular burst of power into the formation before me, causing the Icicles to fly a little faster as the formation was overloaded, the power of my attack strong enough to stagger the beast, if only for a few moments.

Judging by its speed and the distance between us, I felt that I had two, maybe three, more casts before Lia and Silva would engage the beast to keep it from disturbing Luna. Given how little my Icicles had done, I decided to go try something else and quickly drew a formation of Ice and Water, mixing the two elements as I had done before in order to create the pseudo Liquid Moonlight. It was far from the real deal but it packed a surprising amount of freezing energy, something the creatures of the area had been allergic to, so I hoped it would prove to be a good way to deal with this beast.

The stream of liquid didn’t quite stick together over the distance, turning into a bit of a spray but from the clouds of freezing steam all around it, I had no doubts that it remained cold. The beast seemed to have a similar opinion and didn’t want to get sprayed with supercooled liquid and responded by breathing out a stream of fire from the red head and a stream of strange, dark-green mist from the green head, the two attacks mixing and turning into a cone of eldritch green flames that hurt my eyes just from looking at them. The green fire met my spray of freezing water, causing streamers of energy to erupt from the collision side, alongside a tiny amount of steam. Neither attack managed to gain full primacy and the beast was slowed once more. I kept the attack going but by the time the beast ran out of steam, it was easily dodging out of the way of my attack. In a burst of stubbornness, I decreased the cohesion of my attack even further, turning it into a hose that sprayed the freezing liquid all over a large area but with the decrease in cohesion the local Astral Power was able to take a much larger influence, turning the effect chaotic. Some of the drops hitting the monster caused it to shudder in pain, others in what looked a little like pleasure, as if the strange combination of burning from the local aura and the cold from my attack made for a nice sensation. Not something I wanted to consider further, so I stopped my attack and considered my next move.

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Given that Ice hadn’t seemed to work that well, I decided to try Darkness and quickly drew a curse into existence, trying to disorient and confuse the beast, with a bit of extra Fear added to the attack. I considered to try reducing its strength and vitality but given its massive bulk and incredible regeneration, I decided to target its mind, hoping that it would be a weakness.

The result looked quite promising from the distance, the three heads were all surrounded by a thin cloud of darkness, not enough to block the beast’s sight but easily enough to disorient it. The added effects of confusion and fear seemed to have taken effect, too, at least I thought so from its reduced coordination.

My Curse gave my two companions the opening they had desired and both of them took it without hesitation. Silva moved first but Lia was the first to reach the creature, which I had Observe’d by now and learned that it was called a Serpentis Triad and level eighty-three, the level making my eyes go a little wide in surprise. It had been a while since we had faced an enemy of a higher level than I was.

Lia’s attack was quite simple, she used her chain-hook in an attempt to probe the creature’s toughness and reflexes, keeping her distance in case she was outmatched. Meanwhile, Silva was demonstrating that she wasn’t just a large dog and had gone into her two-legged form, her paws turning into large, wicked claws and her maw getting a little larger and more intimidating. Then, as if that secondary form wasn’t intimidating enough, she let out a loud, drawn-out howl that shifted in tone a few times and was surrounded by the silvery-white glow I recognised as Lady Hecate’s magic and started to grow even further. By the time the glow disappeared a few seconds later, she had gone from the already intimidating two metres to almost twice that size, getting large enough to dwarf the Serpentis Triad. At least in height, it still had the edge in length.

By now, Lia had struck the Triad multiple times, causing some more blood to ooze out from its massive body but again, it wasn’t anything decisive. Progress, yes, but we’d have to tear the thing up a lot more if we wanted to win the battle of attrition.

And then, Silva hit the Triad with a low growl, loud enough to be felt deep in my gut. If I had been an enemy, it might have acted as the myth of the brown note, not due to any acoustic mechanism but simply because a hound that large coming at you with that type of growl was… intimidating, no matter what you were.

Watching Silva literally tear out strips from the beast only added to that and the distraction she provided meant I didn’t need as much focus to keep the curse I had placed on it going. That, in turn, allowed me to call up a bit of Blood Magic, further enhancing Silva as I was fairly confident that she was the best bet we had to win this fight. Her performance also reminded me that Silva held back a lot of her strength in our day-to-day fights, keeping it in reserve for emergencies. Or moments during which the Lady Hecate wanted Silva to kick ass without reservation like this one.

And kick ass, she did. Not that the Serpentis Triad had something I’d recognise as an ass, but that didn’t dissuade Silva in the slightest. With the support from my Blood Magic on her and the Darkness Curse on the Triad, she was stronger and a lot more coordinated, while Lia made sure to strike out whenever the Triad tried to distract Silva with two of its heads so the third could do something nasty. Those attempts at nastiness were neatly answered with a blade to the mouth, courtesy of Lia, making sure that Silva could continue with her onslaught.

Alex, too, added their own brand of chaos, but regardless of our help, it was clearly Silva who carried the battle, viscerally tearing out bloody chunks of flesh from the Triad and scattering it across the open space. No matter how much the monster regenerated, Silva simply continued to tear it apart until even the prodigious regeneration of the Triad couldn’t keep up with the accumulating damage.

A part of me was amused at the fight, as Silva never even tried to decapitate the not-quite-hydra so we had no idea if it would grow back more heads. But we did know that tearing off its body didn’t cause a new body to form, the Triad Serpent simply died. In many, many pieces.